


Descent

by PubliusEros



Category: Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Light Bondage, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-27
Updated: 2017-06-27
Packaged: 2018-11-19 17:39:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11318364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PubliusEros/pseuds/PubliusEros
Summary: For Corrin, loving her sister Hinoka is not a temporary thing. All the confusions, complexities, and potential consequences of their romance are an accepted factor of a relationship she is determined to make a part of her life. So when Hinoka produces a letter, supposedly from her mother, claiming to waive all responsibility? Corrin wonders just one thing:Why fake such a thing?





	Descent

“Hinoka, why did you fake the note?” 

The question hung in the air, leaden. Hinoka's back straightened and hair stood on end as her cheeks pinked. She didn’t turn away from the battle plans laid out before her, but her eyes saw nothing as Corrin closed the short distance across her room. 

“W-what?”

She felt her younger sister standing beside her before she finally turned her head to face her. In meeting Corrin's eyes, she somehow produced a deeper blush and a gulp. 

“I said, 'why did you fake the letter?’” 

The response was calmer than Hinoka expected, curiosity and almost… was it playfulness she heard? Sadness? She couldn’t place her finger on it.

“I didn’t.” She said, the conviction needed lacking. “Mother –“ 

“Hinoka.” Silence. “Mikoto never talked like that. She never wrote like that, either. I have her old letters, sister.” 

The words made the woman flinch, her eyes snapping back to the table and the nonthreatening pieces of parchment. Corrin was still looking at Hinoka, her eyes resting on the wisps of hair behind her ears, no eyes to lock on to. She reached out to curl an errant lock behind her ear, but the motion was interrupted when Hinoka grabbed her hand. 

“I’m sorry,” she said, her eyes tearing up. She wanted to say more, but she couldn’t find any words to say. She looked at Corrin's hand in her own and shook her head. “I just thought… It might make you happier.”

Seconds passed. Hinoka still looked on the verge of passing out, Corrin still calm. Finally, after mustering up the courage to meet her eyes, the Pegasus Knight realized the tactician was smiling at her. 

Corrin raised their hands to her lips quickly and brushed knuckles against her cheek. 

“I know.” Corrin whispered as she pulled her hand out of her sister’s grasp. “But I think we need to talk about it. Come to my tent later.” 

A kiss on her hair and Corrin was gone.

\--

Hinoka picked her way through the small amount of tents and yurts that was the base camp for Hoshido's, or rather, Corrin's, army. Familiarity made Hinoka’s steps quick and large, guard duty having made the camp as familiar as her family’s castle. 

Soon she found herself standing in front of the entrance to her sister’s yurt, her pulse skyrocketing. She took a steadying breath and walked in.

Corrin was sitting on her bed, wearing a simple set of shirt and trousers for bed. She hadn’t seen Hinoka walk in, and her head was bent over the Yato, inspecting it for dirt and grime after its nightly polish. 

Hinoka was not the introspective type but when she was alone with the tactician, she always felt a strange, nostalgic melancholy settle over her. Face to face with what, to her, was her greatest failure: the sibling she hadn’t been able to protect. That she - this coward - got the love and care of Mikoto, and she took it for granted in her rush to mount naive rescue missions. That while she learned to soar in the sky, Corrin was trapped in a tower, learning only what books were able to teach.

And that guilt made her hate Corrin - it wasn’t not very much at all - if her love was perfume, it was one drop of an exquisite oil, almost intangible but the removal of which would completely change the smell's make-up.

That tinge of hatred shamed Hinoka even more, they’ve talked about this. She couldn’t have done anything, she was too young. No matter.

She knew she’d do anything for her happiness, and if that meant clipping this relationship in the bud, then she’d do it. 

She coughed to make Corrin look up, and a smile split her serious expression open.  
“Sister! You came!” She put the Yato on the floor next to her futon, close beside her in case of invaders. Or other things.

She pat the mattress by her feet, inviting her over. If there was one thing Hinoka wished Corrin hadn’t picked up in Hoshido, it was the acknowledgment of familial bonds. Wincing internally, she managed a smile and made her way over.

Settling herself into the cushion, Hinoka took another steadying breath. Taking solace in the fact she had to look at her boots to take them off, she did so.

Before she could begin, Corrin started. “I’m not mad you. I’m not scared of you. I trust you.”

Hinoka nodded and looked at her hands. “I did it so you wouldn’t have to worry. I thought if I pretended, you would feel…”

“Less burdened?” 

Hinoka nodded.

“I’m not burdened. You’re my sister, Hinoka. I fell in love with you as my sister, and I’ll love you forever as my sister.” She put one hand under Hinoka’s chin and turned her face towards her own. “Please look at me.”

Her eyes slid up from her hands until she was looking directly into Corrin's grey ones. “I love you.” The air was heavy with what she hadn’t said, but she made no move to complete the statement, and so the just sat in silence, Corrin’s hand still under Hinoka's chin.

“Are you…? There’s so many things I can’t give you. A child; a home; a line; we won’t be able to have friends. Why not stay with Kaden? You could be so much happier...”

Hinoka grabbed the hand under her chin and and suddenly pressed it firmly into the bed. But as she did so, she realized Corrin grabbed her shoulder and got her off balance. Laying on her back, dear sister on top of her, Hinoka froze. Corrin's arms framed her face, and the one across from her own was unreadable.

Corrin leaned in. 

“Hinoka.” 

The breath that carried her name tickled the shell of her ear, making her squirm into the bed.

“Hinoka. I do not care what they can give me, because they can’t give me the one thing I really want. And do you know what that is?”

Hinoka shrugged lightly, looking away for a moment. 

“Me,” came the barely audible response.

“Of course,” she whispered, “of course it’s you. Love isn’t something to be questioned. It just is.”

She lifted her head to come face to face again. The knight brought her hand to her sister’s cheek, reveling in the feeling of skin under fingertips, not knuckles or any other part; just the softness underneath the most sensitive part of her. Corrin's eyes fluttered shut from the contact, her face softening.

Lifting her head off the bed, she paused a hair’s breath away, unspoken permission being asked. Corrin responded with alacrity, closing the distance between their lips. 

If there had been any doubts before, whether because of wine, adrenaline, or circumstance, they were obliterated by the contact of Corrin's mouth on her own. Her thoughts faded to a haze, only the thought of her sister coming through clearly.

She opened her mouth to speak something, but Corrin saw it as an invitation to deepen the kiss, slick tongue entering Hinoka's mouth. She yelped, her surprise also stemming from the fact she felt her wrists be grabbed. She felt her sister’s hips move up her body, obviously trying to reach something. Half-formed thoughts floated through Hinoka’s dazed mind, but only a mild form of curiosity - and, as Corrin lifted her head, disappointment - were actually acknowledged. Soft fabric grazed her hand, and it was then she realized her wrists were now tied up in the softest material she had ever felt.

“I’m sorry sister, but I think this is the best course of action,” Corrin said, her hands trailing down Hinoka’s arms. Long and lean, they were just like the rest of her, pale in spite of constant sun. They jerked as Corrin’s fingers languidly slid their way down, touch soft enough to tickle. “Careful. The ropes are just lambswool, if you pull with any strength they will break,” she explained, finally lifting her fingers.

“We need to talk.”

“What?” Was the only response that came out of Hinoka as she looked bewildered, her breath still hitching.

A chuckle, low and unfamiliar came from Corrin’s throat. “We need to talk. You’re always wanting to do. There’s no discussion of problems. Just. Just always solving them. There is no action here. There is nothing to do. I need to talk to you.”

Corrin lifted her lips from her sister’s ear, pulling herself up into a slumped kneel. Then she saw Hinoka’s head turned, eyes scrunched in bashfulness. She let out a sigh, placing her hand on Hinoka’s jaw, and gently turned her head to face Corrin’s own. The blush got just a little darker as her eyes slowly made their ways upward, finally settling on her sister’s gaze.

The knight cleared her throat and tried again. “Because I’m afraid. Of what I could do to--”

‘To me. To me? Like I don’t have a choice?” Corrin’s face screwed up, surprisingly deep furrows appeared on her forehead. “I always have a choice. I chose this path, I chose this life. I chose you.”

Hinoka ripped her head away and scrunched her eyes. “No, you didn’t!”

Taken aback, Corrin tilted her head.

"Are you feeling guilty...? About... the other night?” She tilted her head, nonplussed.

“Because, I-I-” She stammered, not being able to complete the statement.

Understanding was starting to dawn on the tactician’s face, and she traced her fingers down to the collar of Hinoka’s uniform, which was just her red and white dress with no armour: no pauldrons nor bracers, nor the long gloves that protected her arms from their straps.

The dress was Hinoka to Corrin. Underneath their armour, everyone had a style of clothing. It was hard for Corrin to relearn everyone’s civilian looks after how in the heat of battle, she had seared their armour and shape into her brain. Not Hinoka. Hinoka looked the same whether in the bloodiest battle or the most important meeting.

Corrin fingered the cloth hoops that held the garment together, usually hidden under the small vest that went with her riding gear. She sighed as she slipped them over their knots, exposing inch by inch the pale expanse of her sister’s skin. Running a finger appreciatively over the newly shown skin, she asked something, but Hinoka couldn’t catch it.

“What,” she gasped, unused to almost any part of her body touched softly, her mind becoming hazy and unfocused again.

‘Can you tell me what happened?’ She repeated, pulling down the dress to expose Hinoka’s chest, her eyes roving over the new expanse. Gauzy touches ghosted over her ribs, maybe an imagined graze of her nipple. A quick movement of Hinoka’s hips caused a massive grin to spread over Corrin’s face.

“Please.”

“Just the condensed version?”

This time, nails. Hinoka hissed, and ground her hips into the bed.

“W-we had just s-saved Ryoma. You were s-sadder than I had seen you in a long time,” her voice was breathless as the act of inhaling became too much an exertion. 

Now the hands were trailing lower, Corrin tracing the slight waist of the knight.

“Right,” came the reply.

“Y-you were getting drunk. And so I drank with y-you. A-and t-then you invited me back to your t-tent --!” Her stuttering was interrupted by Corrin shifting down her body, hiking down her dress with her. Corrin then moved back on Hinoka’s midsection, and settled herself there.

A moan escaped Hinoka when she realized the garments covering Corrin’s sex were moist. 

“Keep on going.” Sighed, there seemed to be almost no authority to the order.

She took in a deep, steadying breath and continued. “S-so, we, uh -- we drank in your room.” She stopped talking as she shuddered, Corrin dragging herself up Hinoka’s torso, leaving a slick trail in her wake.

“Then I did s-stuff to you.” She shuddered again, nerves overwhelmed by the lack of stimulus. She looked pleadingly up to her sister, and realized Corrin’s gaze was boring into her.

“Stuff, you say?” Corrin said, sliding back down with agonizing slowness. “What kind of 'stuff'?”

Hinoka shook her head, not sure if her inability to articulate it was from shame or ignorance. “I can’t... I can’t say.”

In that moment, Corrin’s veins were filled with a desire so powerful is seemed to sear. For the first time, she could imagine herself the firey red of Hinoka.

The bound woman shuddered as she watched lightly tanned hands move from her own hips to slide underneath the thin cloth of her sibling’s shirt. The fabric gave Hinoka just enough detail to recognize an action she was intimately familiar with: Corrin was pinching her nipples. Memory of the sensation from other nights, alone, struggling to think of anyone other than her little sister made her stomach muscles clench.

Corrin then leaned over, bracing herself against Hinoka’s bound wrists, she brought her head back down to the shell of her sister’s ear and whispered, “Was it like that?”

Then Corrin brought her lips to Hinoka’s sharp jaw, feeling the moan she elicited rumble through the knight’s throat. 

Pulling her mouth away, she asked the question again, this time trailing her tongue down Hinoka’s neck. 

“Yes!” She cried, and twisted her body to flip them over, holding Corrin’s hands in her larger ones. “Yes! I was like that!”

She punctuated the statement with a sharp movement of her hips into Corrin’s.

“I-I just wanted to make you feel good,” she whispered, and looked down at her sister.

Corrin shivered, stretched below her sister, heavy breathing the only noise between them. Her expression was one of surprise: eyes wide, her teeth chewing her bottom lip. Hinoka winced at what she saw; she had made her sister fear her.

Time stopped. This was it. Never again. Her eyes welled with tears as she realised she really was the monster she'd always feared becoming.

She began tugging at the bonds.

Corrin’s whisper. “You did.” 

Hinoka stopped all movement, looking intently at her sister, her features no longer showing any signs of trepidation, but instead flush with desire and need. 

With that, Hinoka shifted her grip, both wrists in one hand as she drew back the other.

Corrin winced; she felt the tension release as one of the restraints snapped. She watched, breath hitching as Hinoka brought her wrist up to her mouth and bit the string, then dropped it to the side, forgotten. 

Her hand first went to Corrin’s jaw, grabbing it possessively as she went in for a kiss. Instantly her tongue pressed against Corrin’s lips; permission was granted. It seemed like Hinoka wanted nothing more than to memorize every dip and ridge of Corrin’s mouth with her tongue. 

Corrin moaned into her sister when she felt an unexpected pressure between her legs; Hinoka’s thigh? Its presence was electric. Another moan, this time in disappointment, as she raised her head and broke off the kiss, licking her lips to break the thread of saliva connecting them. 

She dragged her hand down the tactician’s front, deft fingers making rough, quick work of the buttons. Flicking it open, Corrin shuddered as Hinoka closed her fingers around the already reddish nub. Corrin writhed, making her spine concave to try and escape the confusingly pleasurable stimulation, pressing into the bed.

Some deep need to articulate the two normally mutually exclusive feelings drove her to start stuttering, but she interrupted herself with a moan.

In less than a moment, Hinoka had let go, her fingers then moving to Corrin’s hipbones, digging, trying to leave any kind of evidence this was happening on the other woman’s skin. Warmth coiled in her lower belly, a sadly hopeful reflex of what her body wanted instead, a deep throb inviting nothing in.

And then Hinoka’s mouth was on her own, stopping up Corrin’s moan with her tongue. Corrin finally broke the kiss, panting; no match for Hinoka’s much better conditioned lungs.

“I’m sorry,” she rasped, emotion unreadable by Corrin’s ears. “I’m sorry you’re always the one having to talk.”

She shivered - the strange undetermined quality pricking a sense of anxiety in the smaller woman. Hinoka seemed not to notice, her eyes cast down to watch as her hands wrenched the drawstring holding Corrin’s trousers together, and sighed as she pressed a hand against the last layer between them. Corrin's body raised to meet it, and another clench resulting in a disappointing ache jolted through her.

After much too long, Hinoka hooked the offending piece of cloth, pulling it away, the lace keeping the garment around her hips practically dissolving. 

Corrin cried out when Hinoka’s fingers made contact with her folds; the blunt points of her digits so different than the unyielding plane of pressure of thigh. Instinct made her tilt her pelvis, trying to fill the overwhelming emptiness she felt. 

“Please-” Corrin begged, straining against her sister’s hold, trying to buck against Hinoka’s long digits.

“Say it,” she growled, moving her fingers just out of reach. “I need you to say it.”

“I d-don’t know! I just- I just want you. Please!” 

Hinoka flinched, unbelieving.

“Again.”

“I w-want you, Hinoka. Plea-” her pleas melted into a groan as the woman in question entered her, slower than death. 

“Again,” she repeated, settling her groin onto Corrin’s still-clothed thigh, her own liquids letting her undergarments slide up and down the gauzy fabric. 

Corrin stammered out the four words Hinoka wanted to hear; she was rewarded with the heel of Hinoka’s hand pressed into bundle of nerves at her apex. It was too much too fast. She cried out again in her relief, her walls clenching at the flesh inside her. Hinoka jerked, a much weaker echo of the orgasm just experienced by the shuddering woman came over her. 

“P-Please, again,” Hinoka implored.

From her haze, her sister whispered the words out like it was the hardest labour in the world: “I want you, Hinoka...”

She shrieked like a fireball, fingers leaving Corrin to cover her mouth, the taste and smell of her sister filling her senses as she groaned.

\--

Hinoka woke a few hours later, sky still dark. Being awake this early wasn’t strange for the Pegasus knight; getting up early was natural for her - beginning training before dawn had become routine once they had gotten close to Nohr’s borders. And, also, she thought, it’d look strange for her to come out of Corrin’s tent in the morning. 

Her one arm was still bound, stiff from the awkward position. Corrin flinched in her sleep at Hinoka moving to free the limb, the light snap of the restraint breaking making Corrin curl into the comfort of the knight’s body. While her whole body wanted to leap into the contact, take comfort in the presence of another person in the cot, she untangled her body from her sister’s. 

A quick movement was all it took to get out of the small bed, and Hinoka’s mind was alive with an idea. She rushed to put her clothes on and hastily left a note on the table.

“Have to train. I’ll see you tonight.”

\--

The day dragged. As there were no matters to deal with Corrin spent most of the day just trying to read a book, any book, glancing - or, more realistically, watching - the pale Nohr sky, willing time to go faster. Finally, after an eternity, the gray became streaked with coral, shifting ever closer to another moonless, cloudy night. 

\--

“Oh, good! You’re here,” Hinoka said, her face tinted pink again. “I was worried I’d need to go looking. Ready?”

She was standing in the threshold, flush with excitement.

Corrin stood up from her chair and stuttered, “O-of course. Let’s go!”

Hinoka reached for Corrin, then thought better of it, deciding to brush a hand through her hair instead.

Corrin rapidly grabbed her hand, justifying, “It’s night. No one will see.”

Nodding, the knight swept with her free hand, letting Corrin exit first.

Unbeknownst to them, however, two of the youngest members of the army were still playing, running through the alleyways of tents and yurts, laughing. Too caught up in the game, Hayato smacked into Corrin, his face changing instantaneously from childlike mirth to ancient horror.

“C-Corrin! Hinoka! I’m so-” the panting boy was interrupted by Sakura coming up beside him, her face bright.

“H-hello, sisters!” Sakura said, her eyes barely passing over them as she beamed at Hayato.

“Hey there,” Corrin said, laughing.

”I think there’s a few candies left back in my tent. Come on,” the girl said.

His face darkened at the mention of the treats, but said nothing, glancing at them once more before being waved away by Corrin. To escape as fast as possible, he decided to not ask about why they were holding hands. Maybe royal sisters just did that anyways. How would he know?

“That could have been us,” Hinoka mumbled, watching them retreat back into the canvas jungle. “If only I’d been stronger...”

A squeeze of her fingers interrupted her.

“We can’t help what happened; you’re strong now,” Corrin said, “and we still have so much time.”

“Y-you mean it?”

“Definitely.”

A bashful smile spread across Hinoka’s face.

\--

They were both standing in a field, the new moon making it almost impossible to see. Called ‘the Strip’ by the army, it was where they kept the airborne cavalry, the length of which lent itself to galloping lift-offs needed for Pegasi.

“Are you sure this is a good idea? What if I let go of the reins?” Corrin said, looking at the large, winged horse.

“Yep,” the actual Pegasus rider replied. “I won’t let anything happen to you. I swear.”

Unease swept over the tactician - she was used to horses, and now, after spending so much time with Hoshidans, Pegasi - but she never rode them herself. If she needed rescuing, she was always a passenger.

Years of practice made Hinoka’s mounting quick and effortless, everything happening in a single moment. She held out her gloved hand, and locked eyes with the woman standing on the ground. 

“Do you trust me?” Hinoka asked.

“Of course!”

“Come on, then,” she said, smile growing wider when Corrin finally took her hand.

After watching Hinoka’s grace, the tactician felt like a fool as she climbed up, awkwardly throwing her leg over the saddle. 

She felt Hinoka’s breath tickle her ear.

“Hey, don’t worry,” Hinoka whispered. “If you could have seen how many times this guy threw me off... We all have to learn.”

Corrin then grabbed the reins, holding so tight her knuckles turned white.

“Woah! You don’t need to hold that tight. Here, like this,” Hinoka instructed, taking the smaller hands in her own. “You’ll cramp up otherwise. A lot of new recruits do that too.”

She explained how to make the animal move; Corrin nodded at the appropriate times, but heard virtually none of it. Then the knight tapped her heels into her steed and its hooves left the ground. 

Adrenaline shot through Corrin, her stomach trying to both drop and jump into her throat. No sound but wind rushing and wings flapping her reached her ears. She wanted to scream, but when she opened her mouth nothing came out. Instinctively, she tightened her hands around the thin strips of leather which, to her, were the only thing holding her to the horse. Then she felt the fingers over hers flex, reminding her she wasn’t alone.

“I’m not gonna let you fall,” Hinoka said, her mouth to Corrin’s ear. “I’ve got you.” 

A whoop of air left Corrin’s lungs, the receding spike of adrenaline making her feeling drunk.

“I’m... I’m flying,” she whispered, looking over her side at the receding ground. 

“Yeah, you are,” Hinoka said, pride filling her chest. She wanted to add ‘no-one's ever going to lock you up again,’ but instead just pressed her lips into her sister’s cheek. 

The world looked alien. Everything was so small compared to what Corrin was used to. Even in the tower, things had never seemed this far away. The dark prevented her from seeing much, but the villages were tiny islands of dark in the sea of black, and just the idea that there we humans there was mind blowing. Hinoka’s voice broke through her revelry.

“...See something?” 

Corrin nodded, guessing the first half of the question she missed. 

“Just keep flying. It shouldn’t be too long.” 

\--

The Bottomless Canyon looked like a wound to Corrin. The smattering of mountains around the chasm looked like afterthoughts of a sculptor, hunks of clay left over from a different project. 

“See that mountain? With the blunt top? That’s the one,” Hinoka explained. “The landing shouldn’t be too rough, just be careful.”

The landing was smoother that Corrin expected, prepared for the Pegasus hitting the ground with much more force. Once everything was still, she just sat on the animal, breathing fast. Looking around the barren space, she asked Hinoka where they were.

“T-this used to be my favourite place.” She replied, hopping off the mount with the same easy grace. “I used to come here to be close to you while I planned your rescue.” 

They both blushed at the confession as Hinoka moved closer to the still seated Corrin. 

“D’you need help off?”

“Yeah, I think so. I can’t really feel my legs,” Corrin admitted, half-laughing at herself.

After helping her down, Hinoka looked away, out of her element again.

“I-I’m bad at talking,” she began, “but I want to get better at it. For you.”

Corrin looked around and, finding a pair of somewhat comfortable looking rocks, walked shakily over to them and sat down. She mirrored her actions of the night before, patting the rock beside her.

“Well, what would you like to talk about?”


End file.
